


this little universe of ours

by constellationsofsentences



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, F/F, Lesbians in Space, Minor Character Death, Violence, author is pretentious and also sleep deprived so., no proof reading we die like illiterate men!, rating is for swearing and also guns probably
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-06-11
Packaged: 2019-12-30 09:55:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,737
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18313262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/constellationsofsentences/pseuds/constellationsofsentences
Summary: It happens like this: a ship, blinking suddenly out of hyperspace and into her vision. There are huge cannons attached to it. They swerve, and she watches them, and panic strikes a fire into her chest.It happens like this: one girl, alone on a spaceship, blown out of the sky and into the trawling pod of another.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> me: space lesbians but its ginny and luna  
> me to myself: omg ur mind

It happens like this: a ship, blinking suddenly out of hyperspace and into her vision. There are huge cannons attached to it. They swerve, and she watches them, and panic strikes a fire into her chest. 

“Mayday,” she cries into her comm, “Mayday!” and there is no response except for the crinkle of static and the guns levelling. 

It happens like this: she grabs her Oxygen mask, shoves it over her head, winces as it hits the bruise from not twenty-four hours ago. She grabs the tiny droid, no bigger than her fist. She hits the button.

Her head hits the port as she goes flying into the air. Fire blooms below her. The ship vanishes,  _her_   _ship_  disappears, and she can’t even get the words out to curse them and their goddamn empire and their goddamn fucking stupid guns.

It happens like this: she is shooting across space, and she has just enough time to notice her mask hasn’t been properly charged before the darkness overtakes her thoughts.

 

There’s generally not a lot to space trawling. Some debris here and there, a droid part, if she’s lucky. Nothing special. This part of space has been looted to hell, and even if it weren’t, she knows enough about the world to know that people don’t generally choose to get blown up.

Her work is rather morbid, in a way. She finds it rarely bothers her.

She picks a song from the makeshift radio she’s rigged on her control board. She’s picked up music as they’ve passed over different islands: folk tunes from the deserts, something moody and electronic she’d found at a bar in some city while Justin and Cho were haggling for supplies. She loves the music, loves the way it reflects the places she’s been and the lives of the people who live there. She’d been to a planet, once, broken down by the war and with so few supplies, and still, the people played their music on instruments constructed from tin cans and they danced every night despite the horror that surrounded them, that enveloped them. They’d called it  _jazz,_ and she plays it now and hums along as the empty universe streets out before her. The thing that always struck her the most about space was the stars. When she was a child, sitting outside the tiny hut she and her father called home with her shoes filled with dirt and her hands torn and tired from the day’s work, she would look up at them, and imagine the endless universe around them, the endless opportunity for discovery. 

“Luna,” comes Neville’s voice over the speaker, and she moves her gaze from the tiny porthole window that always makes her feel like she’s in a submarine, like something out of one of the drawings her father would show her when she was small. “Luna, we need you back here now.”

“Why?” she says. There is nobody here. Space is just as empty as it ever was.

“Luna, now, please,” he says, and he’s begging. And she sees it. A haze of fire exploding outwards, like some deadly flower. And then, so small she can barely see it, but getting bigger and bigger by the second, something coming for her. She doesn’t move, can’t move. The thing is getting closer, and Neville is getting hysterical, and she sees a flash of white and red before it streaks past, and,  _oh. Oh no._

“Luna?”

She can say only, “That was a person.”

On the shelf behind her, Elspeth twitters. Luna shushes her, but Elspeth keeps going, her wings creaking with movement. Her mechanical beak opens and a stream of beeps come out of her mouth like a stream. It sounds almost like birdsong. Luna smiles gently at her. To Neville, she says, “Tell Cho I’m going to find them.”

“Luna…”

“Neville.”

He relents. She goes, away from the research station and its makeshift, loosely repaired boosters, towards the person hurtling through space. She’s fashioned a sort of grabber, part grappling-hook, part mechanical arm, 

which makes it easier to catch flying debris she wants to salvage, but she’s worried she’ll hurt the person through the whiplash. The song trips out of the speakers haphazardly. They tend to malfunction. She needs to repair it. One of the arms snakes out towards the person, wrapping around them while Luna attempts to match their pace. She pushes a button, and the arm goes taut, solid where it once was loose. And as she slows, gradually, the person slows with her, just as the music reaches its crescendo. She loosens the arm, again, winds it back towards the docking bay. This was once a pod used to collect specimens, back when her father was convinced there were organisms that could survive in space without oxygen. 

The door opens slowly, and Luna sets the pod back on autopilot towards the station before checking that the dock has been resealed. The person is lying rather haphazardly on the ground, and her mask is coming off. Luna carefully rearranges her limbs, removing the mask. Messy ginger hair is revealed to her, cut just above the shoulder. A resistance jacket, black pants, covered in mud. There’s a beeping from one of the jacket pockets. A droid, most likely. She unzips the pocket and it crawls out onto her hand. It’s about the size of a fist, and it looks almost spider-like, with many legs and LEDs covering what would be its face, like eyes. It’s wary of her, backing into the pocket.

“I won’t hurt you,” she says, and Elspeth beeps her agreement from the shelf. The spider-droid makes a gesture almost like it’s cocking its head, still unsure. “Look, come here. Do you need charging? I don’t have any batteries here if that’s what you run on, but once we get back to my home I’ll give you some if you need.” 

The droid beeps the code for  _batteries,_ and  _maybe,_ quiet and careful, and Luna laughs. Neville is asking for her across the comms. She takes another look at the girl, at the droid still sitting on her chest, and goes to answer him. 

 

The ship they live on was once a research station. During her father’s hunt to discover something, to catalogue all the animals in the system, to see them all, he had lived there, working with specimens and moving from planet to planet to find new species for his notebooks. Now, they line all the walls of the ship. After the explosion, Luna had hung his diagrams from their home planet haphazardly wherever there was space. They cover all the walls of the tiny compartment where she sleeps. She keeps one of the notebooks under her pillow, the one of the animals of the Quibbler System. As she walks the hallways of the ship, she thinks about the last time she saw a Nargle. It must have been years ago, she supposes. She misses their feathers. They were always so soft. 

Cho helps her lay the girl on the table in the kitchen. It’s not so much a kitchen anymore as it is an amalgamation of many different rooms in one. A makeshift washing line has been strung along the ceiling, with lanterns helpfully strung across it. A rug and a few haphazard pillows make up their recreation area. The bucket they use to do laundry is next to Elspeth’s charging station. Elspeth herself is currently sitting on Luna’s head. She twitters, offended, whenever Luna tries to move her. “Come on, Els. You need to charge.” She’s rummaging through a box in search of batteries for the tiny droid, and Elspeth is extremely jealous. “Don’t be silly,” Luna tells her, before offering the batteries to the s one. “Where should I put them?”

The smaller droid considers her for a moment before there’s a soft click, and a compartment opens in its back. Luna slides them in one at a time, alternating between adding and removing. When she’s done, the droid gives itself a tiny shake of its head and then jumps up, beeping excitedly. It hits her gently on the hand, but the words are emerging so fast she struggles to keep track. She catches the word  _friend_ and  _fire_ , though.

“Do you have a name?” she asks it, and it bounces a little bit, telling her  _P1G_ over and over again in bursts of beeps. “Pig? Really?”

“I thought it was funny,” says a hoarse voice, and then coughs strongly.

Luna looks up. The girl is awake. She blinks in a sort of alarmed way. “Who are you?”

“Oh,” says Luna. “I’m Luna.”

“Where are we?” She tries to sit up, then rubs at her head.

“I think you’re concussed,” says Luna, “And this is the Quibbler Zoological Research Station.”

“I thought the Death Eaters got the entire Quibbler System with their death ray.” 

It’s a little insensitive. Luna replies simply, “They did.”

“Oh.”

There’s silence. The girl blinks again. Her eyes are a warm brown, like honey. A scar traces its way across the bridge of her nose. “Is it just you here, then?”

“No. There’s Cho and Neville, too. And Justin, but he left at Republic City because he met a boy. But that’s it. Who are you?”

The girl hesitates. “I’m Ginevra. Well, Ginny. I’m with the Resistance.” She runs her hands through her hair. It’s red and sticking up in all directions. Her eyes are ringed with bags, and the pilot uniform she wears is torn and dilapidated.

“Yes.”

“Did you see my ship? Was it gone?”

Luna shrugs. There’s not much else to do. Ginny deflates, and the droid starts beeping at her. Ginny follows its speech without problem, whereas Luna can only catch the odd word because Elspeth talks slowly. But she hears  _plan,_ and  _destroy,_ and, inexplicably,  _Harry._

“Oh, Pig,” says Ginny. “We’ve got to get you to the Resistance.”

There’s a beat. Ginny rubs her eyes and goes to get her boots from where Luna set them by the wall. She winces a little at the effort; the concussion is clearly mild but still troubling. “Where’s the nearest planet?”

“You were out for a while. We went into hyperspace almost as soon as we got you on board. I don’t know where our destination is; Cho’s the captain, you should ask her.”

Ginny nods and touches Pig consolingly. Hesitantly, she asks, “Are you sure my ship was gone?”

“I didn’t see it,” says Luna.

“Okay.”

“Was it a nice ship?” Luna asks. It’s a mixture of genuine curiosity and unsettling sorrow swirling in her chest, in her stomach.

“Yeah.” Ginny is silent for a moment. Then, quietly, “It was the first thing I ever owned that hadn’t belonged on of my brothers beforehand.”

“Oh.” Luna watches her a moment, the gentle slant of her eyebrows, her warm birch-brown eyes, her sharp nose. She stands. “Well,” she says, “I’m sure your brothers haven’t owned anything like this.”

It’s one of her tapes, well-worn, the label faded from age. Ginny watches it with wide eyes, almost mistrustful. “What is it?”

“It’s called a cassette? They play music. Look.” And she slides it gently into the radio system she’d rigged against the wall, lets the music wash over her as she tilts her head back. Ginny’s expression is replaced by something gentler, something calmer. “Wow,” she says, and Luna nods along to the music and the soft scratch of the violin. “Did you rig this system? It’s impressive.”

Luna feels the tips of her ears turn pink, and nods. “Neville helped me.”

“This is disgustingly sweet,” says Cho, suddenly. Luna swerves, and Ginny sits up straighter. “So. You’re with the Resistance, then.”

“Well, yeah. Unless you’re with the Death Eaters, in which case, of course not.”

Cho titters a little at the joke. Her blaster hangs loosely at her side, and Luna winces at the sight of it. “We’re not with the Death Eaters, but we’re not Resistance, either.”

“Why not? You’re from Quibbler, right? Surely you’d want to… to get revenge.”

Cho gives her a look that makes Ginny tilt her head. “That’s not how these things work. Objective number one is survival. Everything else is secondary.”

Ginny looks at the string lights that Neville spent countless hours wrapping around the washing line one slow day. “Really?”

“Look. We’ll get you back to the Resistance, because I’m sure as hell not a fan of You-Know-Who, but that’s it. That’s all you get.”

She’s still clearly confused but lets it drop. Luna smiles tightly at Ginny, and says, “Sorry,” before following Cho out of the room.

“Cho. What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.”

Luna looks at her for a long moment. She wonders if Cho misses Justin.

“Luna, I  _said_  nothing’s the matter. I meant it.” She sighs. “Look, I just want to make sure we all stay safe, okay? You, Neville, the sample. I promised your dad I wouldn’t let anything bad happen to you.”

“You were only supposed to be babysitting me for an hour. And I’m only two years younger than you, Cho.”

“I know. But I promised. And besides, here we are, guarding one of the best-kept secrets of the galaxy. I don’t want anyone getting their hands on it.”

 

Ginny seems to have relaxed when Luna traipses back into the kitchen. She’s talking quietly to Elspeth, who whirrs enthusiastically, all her usual haughtiness lost somewhere. When she notices Luna, Ginny smiles tightly, while Elspeth begins to beeps frantically until Luna sweeps her onto her shoulder, at which point she begins recounting all the ways in which  _Friend: Ginny_  is wonderful and amazing and oh so sweet. Luna smiles at Ginny and nods sagely at all of Elspeth’s enthusiasms until she runs out.

“Okay, Els. Here,” and she slides her down onto the table to check her wiring. A few bolts have come out of place here and there, and Luna starts to fix them carefully. She can feel Ginny’s eyes on her as she does it. They’re nice eyes: soft and warm like a smile, except for the deep bags that line them. Her mouth is pressed into a hard line. There’s a scar on her cheek, too, which cuts through the freckles on her face jarringly. When she notices Luna looking, she pretends to fiddle with her comms, red blush blooming across her cheeks, staining the tips of her ears. Luna smiles to herself. She tries to focus on Elspeth, but she’s distracted, thoughts flying around her brain.

“What do you do for fun here, anyway?” asks Ginny, clearly bored of the comms.

“Not a lot. The music, mostly. Or we talk,” says Luna. “I like to look at the drawings.” She gestures behind herself, and Ginny looks intently at one of the drawings pinned carefully on the wall.

“Nargles?”

“They were native to Quibbler IV,” explains Luna. “This was a research station. We would travel the system, studying the different species on each planet in the system.”

Ginny smiles. “You must miss it.”

“It’s not so terrible. Whenever we land somewhere new, I try to find a new animal to sketch. So I’m not limited to just Quibbler species.”

“Did you work on the station?”

“No. I was only here because my father was with me that day. My mother and I – we lived on Quibbler IV, but he had to work. He went down with one of the techs, Cedric, to see if he could find a Crumple-Headed Snorkack on II. Left me here with Cho and Neville and Justin. Then the Death Eaters came.”

She doesn’t say the rest. Doesn’t need to. Ginny’s expression gets harder. She fixes Luna with a look that Luna can’t decipher.

“Don’t you wish you could make them pay?”

“Not so much that, no. I want to stop them, of course. But Cho says we need to stay safe, and I believe her. I know I wouldn’t be alive without her.”

Ginny nods. It’s a small motion, almost imperceptible. She says, “Thank you, at least. For taking me back.”

“Why wouldn’t we?” asks Luna, and Ginny smiles.

 

Ginny isn’t sure what to make of the girl in front of her. She smiles, and she looks almost whimsical, but there’s a hardness to her that Ginny’s never seen before. She smiles tightly back. The music is still playing quietly. She looks around the tiny, grey-walled room, noting the elements of homeliness. Somebody is growing plants on a table pushed carefully against the wall. Drawings of animals she doesn’t recognise clutter the walls, labelled with some sort of colour code she can’t decipher. The washing line dangling from the ceiling has been strung up with tiny lights twirled around it; stars of light that spill tiny dots of light across the room. And the droid, clearly made from scraps of metal but carefully sculpted so it’s almost birdlike in appearance. But there are remnants of the research station, too. Ginny sees it in the scientific apparatus brushed to the side of the table, in the photos lining the walls.

In one, a tiny blonde girl beams up at an older man with the kind of reverence Ginny reserves for General McGonagall as they carefully nurse some sort of mammal. It makes Ginny’s heart ache.

She still can’t get a message through to the Resistance. She has no idea if they’ll even know she’s alive. She can’t stand the thought, banishes it as fast as she can from her mind.

Luna pats the droid gently. “You’re all done,” she tells it, and it whirs in appreciation at her. Pig, in Ginny’s own pocket, beeps gently. She pats it.

“Hush, Pig. We’ll be home soon, and then George will give you all the toys you want.” George spoils Pig, really. He’s always finding tiny scraps of machinery and fabric for Pig to push around. Pig loves the attention. He beeps again, loudly. Luna’s droid twitters in response, and Luna laughs. “Do you two want to play for a bit?” she asks, which sets Pig off on how he’s not a  _baby, really, just because he’s small,_ which makes Ginny tap him lightly on the head and bring him over to the bird-like droid.

“Be nice, Elspeth,” Luna tells her.

“You too, Pig.” They whir and beep cautiously at one another, and Ginny turns to Luna. “Thank you. He was getting restless.”

“Don’t they always?” she replies with a knowing smile.

“Did you make her?” asks Ginny, studying the bright feathers which seem to be made from food tins.

“Yes. I’m a space trawler. We find debris… sell it. But sometimes I’ll find droid parts, instead of whole ones, which we can’t sell. Elspeth took me three years to build. Once I had the main parts, it was easy, but we’re in the middle of space, and we have next to no money, so I couldn’t find them easily.” She taps Elspeth’s head lightly as she talks. “We smuggle, too. That’s where we get most of our money.”

“It can’t be fun,” says Ginny. “Being alone in space like this.”

“Where else do we have to go?” replies Luna. A tight clenching feeling pulls around Ginny’s chest. She smothers it.

“The Resistance would always take you in.” Like they took in Ginny, like they took in her family. She wonders, briefly, whether she and Luna would have been friends, if they lived on the base together.

“Yes. Well… this is our home, now.”

And Ginny sees that. She can see the same comfort, the same cosiness that she had once had in her own ship. Her own ship, which is now gone, long forgotten.

Outside the single, tiny window, the stars stop racing by. They burst out of hyperspace into clear, empty space.

Except for the hulking Death Eater ship which looms above them.

 

“Shit,” says Ginny. “Shit shit shit shit.”

Pig beeps in alarm, scuttling towards the edge of the table where she scoops him up and into her pocket.

“I won’t let them find you,” she says. “I won’t.”

An alarm begins to blare as a boy she doesn’t recognise, but who must be Neville, hurries in. “Are you bugged?” he asks.

“What? No!”

He pushed her towards the cockpit. Cho sits glaring at the controls. She presses buttons frantically. “How did they get here?  _Fuck._ ”

“You got any guns?”

 _“_ This is a research station, goddamnit. Did you bring them here? Neville, get the sample. Are you bugged?” Cho is talking to multiple people at once. Ginny can barely keep up.

“I’m not bugged.”

“Neville, the  _sample_! Okay, Luna, get to your pod.”

“But… my drawings.”

Cho fixes her with a steely glare. “Get to your pod. When I tell you,  _go._  Resistance, you’re going to be my co-pilot.”

The Death Eater ship fires. Cho swerves. Luna says, quietly, “Okay,” and scrambles from the room, as Ginny sits in the chair.

It’s possibly the most inflexible thing she’s ever flown, wide and tall and not remotely aerodynamic. They pull it upwards, over the ship. There’s a cloud of asteroids ahead, wide and huge and every one of them deadly. There’s no way they can get through it, not in this ship. This ship was not designed to fight off Death Eaters. This ship was designed to study a planet that was destroyed long ago.

“Is that the planet we’re going for?” asks Cho, pointing below, to the green planet that Ginny knows so well. She nods.

“And there’s something in that droid? Something that will kill the Resistance?”

Ginny nods again.  _Fuck,_ she thinks, realising what’s going to happen. “Then get out. Get to the pod. Fly them out. Fuck, okay.” She takes a selection of enormous breaths. “Get them somewhere safe. And then, and then, destroy those bastards.”

Ginny nods. “I’ll get them out.” It’s all she can do, because this is horrifying, and the Death Eaters are going to pay for doing this again. They swerve against a gun, again.

“Cho?” asks someone. It’s Luna, arms full of drawings. “You can’t…” And,  _oh, fuck._

“No, Lu, listen to me. Listen to me. It’s going to be fine. You’re going to be fine, you’re going to get that sample out, and then you’re going to be safe, okay. Okay?”

Luna stares at her. “I’ll stay with you. Neville can…”

“ _No._ If we’re doing this… if the sample’s going out, we’re going to need someone to explain it. Who better than you?” Cho laughs. “Your dad would be so proud.”

“He’d be proud of you, too,” Luna tells her. “Don’t get hurt.”

“They won’t. They want it too badly. Until they find it, they’ll keep me.”

Luna nods carefully, her eyes burning with something awful. “We’ll find you. We’ll get you back.”

“It’s going to be okay,” Cho says, instead of replying. “It will.”

 

It’s that feeling again. The one she got as she watched her home turn into bursts of flame, planet after planet after planet. Her chest is tight and her heart aches and she is  _so, so, so_ tired.

All for that sample, over, and over again for that stupid sample. Ginny is looking back and forth between them, but Luna says nothing to her. Elspeth chirps a sorrowful goodbye. Cho clenches her jaw. “ _Go,_ ” she says, and Luna does.

 

She curses herself, later, sitting beside a girl she barely knows but whose eyes feel like home, knowing that Cho is somewhere, swallowed up by Death Eaters. Knowing that she did it for Luna.

Ginny shifts in the pilot’s seat. Neville is sitting hunched on a bench behind them, clutching the sample. This pod is faster, hurtling down through the atmosphere of the green planet ahead of them. For a moment, it looks just like Quibbler IV. She pushes the thought down.

A base is approaching. “Can you comm them?” asks Ginny.

“Oh, yes,” says Luna, but her throat is hoarse. She pushes the button.

“Who is this?” comes a voice, crackling over the comm.

“Lee?” asks Ginny. “It’s me.”

There’s silence, nothing but the crackle of static, like somebody crumpling packaging. Then, hoarse, “Gin? Fuck, okay. Wow. I need––what’s the password?”

“I solemnly swear I am up to no good, Lee. Now let me down. I’ve got the data.”

 

There’s a crowd of people by the landing base. They cheer and whistle as the pod lands with a bump. A cluster of redheads has gathered around the front. Ginny grins at the sight of them, but she turns back to Luna before opening the airlock. “You alright?”

Luna plasters on a smile, taking Neville’s hand. She says nothing.

When they descend the steps, somebody starts cheering. A boy, lanky and bespectacled, with curly hair that has been tied haphazardly in a ponytail, smiles as Ginny mimes tipping her hat. The boy next to him, tall and bright red with glee, or maybe relief, sweeps her up into a hug. He has Ginny’s freckles. The rest crowd around. A round-faced girl with eclectic curls whispers frantically in Ginny’s ear. A boy with dreadlocks gives her a high-five. And all the ginger boys circle her with joy in their hearts and leaping off their tongues.

“Oh!” says Ginny suddenly. “This is Luna and Neville. They found me.”

“No,” says Neville quietly, “that was all Luna.”

Luna smiles weakly as they exclaim various greetings. Ginny beams.

Then, suddenly, the crowd seems to quieten. A tall, angular woman strides through them. She’s short but doesn’t seem it. Her expression is too powerful, too certain. She smiles gently at Ginny. “Weasley. Good to see you,” she says, and accepts Ginny’s hug. “Who are these?”

“Luna and Neville. They saved me. And Pig,” she says, when he beeps. “We got the data.”

“Marvellous. Well, I must be thanking you two.”

And then she notices the sample. All the warmth drains from her face as she says: “Where did you get that?” When neither of them replies, she turns to Ginny. “Weasley. Away. Now.”

Ginny obeys. She watches with wide eyes as the General asks her question again.

“Quibbler?” says Neville, almost stuttering with fear. “Our station–“

“We were on the Lovegood Research Station during the massacre. My father collected this sample. It’s the last one.”

“What is it?” asks the girl who’s standing next to Ginny. Her hair forms a dark cloud around her head.

“ _Hermione…_ ” hisses one of Ginny’s brothers.

“It’s called the Living Death,” says the General. “And it’s the reason the Quibbler System was destroyed.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> OKAY i have no idea how the force works so we're all just going to have to deal with my shitty interpretation of it. thanks.

_He is in his cell._

_He is always in his cell, or in the lab, or sometimes in the corridor._

_There are always guards, and they never speak. They wear their ridiculous masks (really, he is not sure why somebody has not pointed out how stupid they look. Maybe they can make him redesign their outfits, instead of making him do all this horrible, horrible work.)_

_He misses his family. Once, he had one. They swim around in the murkiness of his consciousness, and he can only just remember their faces. Once, he had a world beyond this cell, beyond the lab, beyond even the corridor. Once he saw animals, and rivers, and sky. He used to fly, he remembers. He remembers the passenger seat beside his own and a girl with a hard smile and a soft mouth._

_It has been so long. Five years, maybe. Or seven. Days blend together, here, in the cell, and the lab, and the corridor._

_There is a spare bed in his cell. He does not know who it is for. The guards whisper outside his cell. He assumes it is gossip. He does not want to listen. It is often graphic and horrifying, what these people have done. What they laugh about._

_He does not listen, so he is surprised when they bring a girl into his cell._

_He is surprised when she tilts her head up, and her eyes widen, and he knows those eyes._

_He is even more surprised when she screams._

 

* * *

 

General McGonagall takes them to a room in the middle of the base. Scientists in Hazmat suits tap the glass and surround it with several layers of plastic, before depositing it on her lap.

“You kept this in a  _glass_ jar?” asks McGonagall, with the air of one surrounded by complete idiots.

“We weren’t ever going to let it out. We were just keeping it… safe.”

“Why didn’t you just… destroy it, if it’s so dangerous?” asks Ginny, raising an eyebrow at all the precautions.

“To destroy it, you’d have to let it out of its jar. And if you did… there’s a very slim chance of survival. Living Death is highly toxic. It sends you into a permanent sleep until your organs fail from lack of water and malnourishment. It’s incredibly dangerous, and there is no known cure.” McGonagall’s business-like tone seems a little out of place. It makes Ginny shiver.

“My father was working on a cure,” offers Luna. “That’s why he had it.”

“Did he find it?”

“…No.”

“Why… did they need to destroy the Quibbler system for it?” The whole thing is ludicrous. “Surely… harvesting it would be a better option for the Death Eaters? Less energy than blasting entire solar systems to bits. How were there even people  _in_ the system, if stuff like this grew there.”

“It doesn’t grow naturally on Quibbler. Living Death has developed in a lab on Quibbler I forty years ago. It nearly wiped the whole planet out. Refugees were taken to Quibbler II and Quibbler I was decontaminated. The planet’s ecosystem was completely destroyed, and with it, all trace of Living Death,” she says. “At least, that was what they said.”

“The Death Eaters knew we were studying it, trying to find a cure, in case somebody manufactured it again. I guess they thought we were based on-planet, but they didn’t know which,” murmurs Neville. He’s barely spoken this whole meeting.

“But why not steal the sample?  _Why_  destroy it?”

Luna stares. “They couldn’t… have a sample themselves. Could they?”

“Oh, my  _word_ ,” says McGonagall. She taps at her comms. “Jordan, get Dumbledore down here,  _now._ And tell nobody to say a word about the plant, or the new arrivals.”

“If that’s true, then Cho… they didn’t want you for the samples, did they? They wanted your knowledge about Living Death.” Ginny can feel the horror blooming. “And she  _knows the location of this base._ They won’t even have to make it obvious. How long does it take to act?”

Neville closes his eyes, rubs at his temple. “A week? Five days?”

“Then they can infect practically all rebel circles with barely any effort. We move around, it gets transferred across the whole galaxy… Within a month, the whole Rebellion… gone.”

McGonagall sits down, carefully. “This is worse than I thought possible. We need to put ourselves in lockdown, effective immediately.”

“We  _can’t,_ ” says Ginny. The whole thing is so horrifying, so completely terrible, that the words tumble out of her mouth before she can think about them. “We can’t. We have to get in there and destroy it before they can destroy us. Think about this. It gets out, we’ll all be dead in a matter of days. People will try to leave. They’ll see we’re in lockdown and get scared, sneak away. It only takes one, and then the whole galaxy gets infected, one by one. And what can we do? Sit here and wait for it? That’s the worst thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

There’s silence. Luna stares at her, eyes wide. There’s something in her face Ginny can’t name, but it makes her heart jump.

From the back of the room, somebody starts clapping. Ginny turns, to see Dumbledore, standing there, eyes bright. He looks as if he just watched a good play, rather than heard somebody arguing about the future of the galaxy. “Wise words, Miss Weasley,” he says.

Harry, behind him, stares at her in horror. She winces at him.

“I’d always suspected something like this to be true,” he says, and Ginny wishes he would just get on with it. “Living Death did not seem like something to be destroyed so easily.”

“So we’ll do it? We’ll destroy the ship.”

“How, Miss Weasley? Which base will it be at? What are its weaknesses?”

“So, what, are you suggesting we just wait for it to come to us?”

Dumbledore laughs slightly. He’s always so  _goddamn_ cryptic. “Yes, Miss Weasley, that is exactly what I’m suggesting.”

 

McGonagall’s voice starts crackling over the destroyed speakers later that evening. “This base is currently in a state of lockdown,” she recites, crisp and calm as ever. “Only those with red-level missions or above may leave the planet. Please, remain calm. There is nothing to fear.”

People are rushing left and right. Those who know what is happening are frantically calling their families, their loved ones. Those who don’t are also frantically calling their loved ones. Ginny struggles past a woman on a tearful comms call with her wife, carrying a pack for Luna in one hand. Harry had taken Neville to his quarters, which he shared with Ron.

“Here we are,” she says, tapping on the grey door when they arrive. “Home sweet home.”

Luna says nothing, even as Ginny spreads the mattress over the spare cot somebody has rigged in the centre of the room. It’s a small space, crammed with trinkets and clothes from every place she’s visited. Luna walks over to a photo of her and Ron and Bill, taped hastily above her cluttered desk. “There were more on my ship,” she murmurs. “But that’s gone.”

Luna looks back at her. “So’s mine, I suppose.” She’s still clutching the drawings she’d gone back for, the ones that had made her hear what Cho was going to do. Elspeth, perched on her head, whirrs and clanks, and Luna smiles and pats her head. She spreads the pictures on the mattress and removes a pillow which she sets down.

“Do you miss it?”

“Miss what?”

“Quibbler.”

Luna’s face becomes suddenly unreadable. “Of course I do. I think about it every day. But it’s hazy, I suppose. Do you have anywhere I could put Elspeth to charge? She gets cranky otherwise.”

Ginny shows her the charging port, sets her comms up by it.

“You have a lot of brothers.”

Ginny laughs. “Yeah. Six.”

“Six? Who are you closest with?”

“I don’t know. What do you want me to say? I love them all equally? They all have different roles in my life, I guess.” It’s true. She loves them too much to pick, she realises, and cringes at the cheesiness of the thought.

Luna hums thoughtfully. How could she have been so peaceful, stuck in the middle of space with something so dangerous? “Do you have any clothes I could borrow?”

It’s an odd change of conversation, which makes Ginny start. “Uh, yeah. Hang on.” She fumbles around her drawer and comes out with a loose shirt and some trousers, carefully folded, probably by Percy. He likes to come in and tidy up her room when she’s away. She thinks it’s his way of dealing with the stress of it while hiding that he’s actually stressed.

When her brothers are away, she tends to sit in the rec room with a ball and throw it against the wall until the tension of it goes away. Sometimes Hermione will come to sit with her and read a book while she throws it again and again, trying to get a perfect rhythm while Hermione quotes the best lines at her.

Luna utters a quiet thanks and moves into the corner to change.

“They’re not much,” Ginny says, not apologetically but almost.

“That’s okay. It’s generous, still.” Luna sits on the bed, sighs a little. In Ginny’s clothes, dark black for missions, she looks almost subdued, her expressions muted. The lonely look in her eyes doesn’t help.

Ginny takes the yellow dress she’d been wearing earlier from her. “I’ll get this cleaned,” she says. She takes care when putting it in the laundry basket, setting in down slowly and carefully. Luna sighs again. She lies back on the bed so only her legs are vertical, spreading her arms above her head. Ginny comes to sit by her. She props her head up on her arm. Luna’s got her eyes closed. She’s humming a tune, something Ginny remembers as the song she was playing earlier. Elspeth titters from her position on the desk. She shifts onto her own back. The plain grey duvet rustles under her weight. Except for the photographs, the whole room is a mass of grey. She’s never really noticed it before, but Ginny realizes she’s always been ready to move on, no matter how much she loves the Resistance. She sighs.

Besides her, Luna’s breathing has levelled out. Somehow, she looks less out of place in Ginny’s clothes as she sleeps, despite the brown leather jacket being so opposed to anything she’d ever wear. Ginny watches her breath, watches the steady rise of her chest through the thin cotton shirt. Eventually, thoughts melt into dreams, and thoughts of gentle kisses and a world without war make her body warm.

 

The girl with the cloud of hair wakes them up the next morning. Luna starts, realizes she’s somehow been cocooned in Ginny’s arms all night. Ginny hums, reaching an arm over her head to rub at her eyes. “Hey, Hermione.”

“I don’t want to, ah, interrupt, but McGonagall wants us. Training for the big plan, or whatever.” She’s all business, bustling around as they try to fix their clothing. Ginny disappears into the corner to change. Luna straightens Ginny’s jacket. There’s a strange sort of intimacy to sharing clothes. Luna pulls at a loose string. The shirt’s a little too long, the trousers a little too tight. Hermione urges to Ginny to hurry up.

“Alright, alright,” she says, irritable, and then, softer, as Hermione bustles outside, “You okay, Luna? You don’t have to come if you don’t want.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Luna. “Cho’s my friend.”

Ginny nods. “Come on, then.” She grabs Luna’s hand, and they jog to catch up with Hermione. “Everything okay?”

“Yeah. I mean, we’re in lockdown, and everyone’s scared, so not really, but we’ve got you, right? And Harry’s on the team, too, so that’s two people who know what they’re doing.”

“Three, you mean.”

“Oh, yes, Luna, of course,” says Hermione. Luna can see the bags under her eyes, deep imprints like she hasn’t slept in days.

“I meant you, ‘Mione. So, four, I guess.”

Hermione bumps her shoulder against Ginny’s, who squeezes Luna’s hand.

 

General McGonagall is sitting with Dumbledore on one side of a round table. There are three unoccupied seats. Ginny slides into one, motions for Luna to follow her. Hermione perches on the other side.

There’s seven of them, in all. Harry she recognizes from last night, and one of Ginny’s brothers–the tall one. Neville looks positively terrified, to Harry’s left. There’s an angular blond boy, too, who looks distinctly separate from the rest of them. He sits, straight-backed, closest to Dumbledore, although he doesn’t look happy about it.

“Hello,” she ventures to him. He doesn’t reply.

She chooses not to take it to heart.

“Well,” says McGonagall. “Thanks for finally deigning us with your time, Miss Weasley.”

Ginny’s brother ineptly disguises a laugh in a cough. She makes a face at him. “Sorry,” she tells the General.

“You are all aware of the current situation, yes? We need to stop the universe from being destroyed.”

Ginny’s brother looks glum. “We’re _always_ doing that.”

Harry nods. “One second we thwart the Death Eaters, the next they’re back with an even _more_ dastardly plan.”

“I know,” exclaims Ginny. “How do they keep _doing_ that?”

“Yes, yes, being the Saviour of the Galaxy is very trying. Now, how about, instead of complaining about almost dying, we start trying to stop it,” says the blond boy. Ginny’s brother shoots him a dirty look. Harry laughs and nudges him.

Neville still looks mildly terrified. He says, “Um. Sorry, but I’m just wondering why I’m here. I’m not much use in a fight. Or anything, really.”

“That’s ridiculous, Neville,” says Luna. “You know the most about Living Death, here.”

“But what use is that?” asks the blond boy. “We’re trying to _destroy_ the thing, not grow _more_ of it.”

“Shut up, Malfoy,” says Ginny.

“No, I can’t believe I have to say this, but I’m with him,” says her brother. “These two don’t have any combat experience or anything. Malfoy’s right. We aren’t trying to save the plant, and they probably can’t fight their way past one Death Eater, let alone a _squadron_ of them.”

“Ron, I swear–” Ginny begins, but she’s interrupted by McGonagall’s firm assertion: “That’s why you’re going to have to teach them.”

 

“Mr Potter is the leader of this mission,” she says, sometime later, as they line up in an empty training room. “You should do what he says when he says to do it. That means you, Mr Malfoy.” The blond boy sneers a little.

“Miss Weasley is your pilot, Mr Weasley is your explosives expert, Miss Granger your strategist should you need it. Mr Malfoy here will help her when needed, but he is here as a sharpshooter and force user.

“Your mission is to retrieve Cho Chang and then destroy the ship. Miss Lovegood and Mr Longbottom will be able to identify it should the need arise, and will also be able to liaise with Miss Chang to prove you are present for her safety. On the ship, you will split into three groups: two to plant your explosives under the directions of Mr Weasley, and one to locate and retrieve Miss Chang. Is that clear?”

They nod. Hermione says, “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. I expect you back in here at this time every day until the ship arrives. We do not know when it shall arrive, so you are to go to bed at a sensible time and avoid any alcohol until it does.”

It’s hard work. Luna tries to familiarize herself with a blaster until her arms feel like lead, heavy and unworkable. Neville himself is drenched in sweat. “I don’t think I can do this,” he murmurs to her, in one of their minuscule breaks.

Luna wipes the wetness from her forehead, gathers back her hair. “You can,” she says simply.

He makes a face, so she repeats it. She turns back to the target. Ginny, a few people down, is hitting the target dead-on each time. Luna does not. But she will not stop trying.

 

Ron, despite his earlier unkindness, is rather funny. He also knows a lot about bombs. “Fred and George, they’re the real experts. But living with them does give you a lot of know-how,” he remarks, early on. He shows her how to set a bomb, how to defuse it. She finds it better than blasters. Her fingers are nimble from years of practice rewiring droids. Ginny stumbles over the wires until she pushes it away from her and crosses her arms in defeat. “I don’t understand how you’re so good at this,” she grouses to Luna.

Luna throws her a sideways grin. “Elspeth,” she says, and Ginny laughs. “Her wiring is old in the first place, and she’s always getting up to nonsense. I don’t know what to do with her.”

“Bet she’s not as much of a handful as Pig.”

“Bigger, though. More places to break.”

“Pig’s got _so many_ legs, though. And he’s so _small!_ I’m always worried somebody will step on him.”

“What was that data he had on him, anyway?” she asks. “The one they attacked you for?”

“Huh?” asks Ginny. “Oh. Nothing. Just, you know, private Rebellion stuff. Nothing to worry about.” She shifts uncomfortably and begins pulling at wires. A red one once pulled, sets off a tiny alarm.

“Gin, seriously. Be careful. If this was real, you’d have killed us all,” says Ron. He takes the fake bomb and begins fiddling with it. Draco mutters something unkind.

Ginny turns red. Luna watches her carefully as she swallows and begins to tap at her knees. She lets it go. It is none of her business, after all.

 

She doesn’t know what to make of Draco. He is rude, his words angular like his appearance. He sneers and scowls and throws words like daggers.

He is also a force user.

So is Harry, of course. They spar in the middle of the room, sending tables and chairs flying and making the hanging lights rattle and turn like ceiling fans. Harry wipes a layer of sweat from his face, slams Draco in the chest with the butt of his green lightsaber. Draco wheezes.

“Not so smug _now,_ Malfoy,” crows Ron, from where he stands watching the fight.

Malfoy sneers. For him, it is almost a laugh. He swipes a leg out. Harry falls flat onto his back, the lightsaber clattering off into the distance. Malfoy’s own lightsaber is dangerously close to Harry’s face. Both are breathing heavily. “Nice try, Jedi,” he snipes.

Harry brings himself up to rest on his forearms. He laughs. Malfoy straightens, looking–not _pleased,_ but almost. He begins to saunter over to Ron.

A table flies across to block his way.

Malfoy turns, glares. “Funny.”

“You know, I never actually surrendered. You should pay more attention to details.” Harry wipes his face again, holding his hand out for his lightsaber with the other hand.

Sparks of green and blue light fly everywhere as their blades collide. Next, to Luna, Ron whoops slightly.

They are a blur of colour. Draco turns, and a spiral of blue light follows him. He slams his blade down. Harry counters, shifting to the right with a grin. Draco snickers, parries, somersaults.

“Stop with the theatrics, Draco,” says Harry. “You look cool, but at what cost?”

“Cooler than _you_ ,” Draco bites out.

This makes Ginny heckle him. “What kind of comeback was _that,_ Malfoy?” She is leaning against a pole, cleaning her blaster. Luna can see her muscles clearly through the tight vest she’s wearing. She tries not to think about it.

Draco makes a frustrated noise. He’s on the defensive, Harry pressing forwards intensely. “Ah, yes. You know, every time you’re rude to me, I forget why I defected in the first place.” His Dark Mark is peeking out from under his shirt. Harry glances at it momentarily, which allows Draco to aim a kick at his side. Harry curls inwards for a moment, before driving back outwards. He swings again.

“Because the Death Eaters are the worst?” he offers, panting.

“Hear, hear,” says Hermione.

“I’m still rooting for Harry, though,” Ron adds. “Boo, Malfoy.”

They have an easy kind of camaraderie, even as Harry aims his lightsaber at Draco’s side. Draco tries to knock him over again, but Harry is ready for it. His own kick lands squarely in Draco’s chest. Ron begins to clap. Neville joins in, hesitant. Harry is seemingly the only member of the crew is comfortable around, yet. Luna bumps her shoulder against his as Harry places his foot against Draco’s chest. His lightsaber is up against Draco’s throat. “Stop showing off, Draco. It’s predictable.”

Draco scoffs. “Whatever.”

“No,” says Harry. “Tell me you’ll stop, and I’ll let you go. It’s going to get you killed, otherwise.”

Draco sneers, again. Luna thinks, if she counted, Draco would have sneered at Harry well over a hundred times today alone. “Fine. Okay. I’ll stop.”

“You’d better. The Death Eaters don’t care how good your somersaults are, Draco.” He removes his foot. Draco stands, grimacing.

Ginny laughs. “No, of course, they do. They probably, like, rate us on our somersaults. Forwards rolls, too. Maybe a little comment on our cartwheels.” She slings her blaster in her belt and says, “My turn.”

Harry adjusts his lightsaber. “Force or no?”

“I’m not a coward, Harry. Force, obviously.”

They square off, Harry exchanging the lightsaber for a staff. If it was hard to ignore Ginny’s muscles earlier, it is harder now, as she flies at Harry, planting two punches in his abdomen. Harry retreats before returning the attack. She is like a bird, or a snake, or maybe a combination of the two, moving with such sureness, her feet always landing where she wants them. She darts outwards in sudden bursts, and her arms move with assured strength. Harry sends a chair skidding in her direction and Ginny rolls out of its way like a bullet, which earns an offended scoff from Draco.

“Oh, so _she’s_ allowed to somersault, but I’m not,” he mutters.

Ron gives him a scathing look. “That wasn’t a somersault, Draco, that was a _roll_. Go Ginny!” he whoops.

Luna lets out her own little cheer and blushes when Ginny turns back to offer her a smile. She counters Harry’s incoming staff with her arms, whistling a little when it clearly hurts. She responds by kicking him backwards, catching him before he can land on the floor. “Thanks, Gin,” he says.

“No problem,” she responds and drops him.

This makes Draco whoop with laughter. Harry, wheezing, offers him an impolite gesture, before turning it on Ginny, who has produced her blaster from her belt and is holding it against his forehead.  “Surrender?”

“Yeah. Okay. Good one, Gin,” Harry says, and high fives her when she pulls him up. He collapses on the chair next to Ron, who pats him enthusiastically on the back.

“Who’s next? Ronniekins?”

Harry barks a laugh at the nickname. Ron laughs. “You’re kidding? Nah, I already got thrashed today by him.” He sticks a thumb in Malfoy’s direction. “You aren’t getting me back up there for a thousand creds. Ask ‘Mione.”

Hermione is writing notes on Living Death. She refuses.

“Okay. Okay. Luna?”

Luna feels herself pale a little. “Um. Well, I’ve never learnt.”

“That’s okay. I’ll teach you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> me, in my bed at night, chaotically writing a fight scene with no bearing on the actual plot: it's the homoeroticism


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i am on a ROLL which is probably not great when you think my exams start tomorrow

_She sees him, and she screams. It slips out of her mouth helplessly, just as she is helpless to stop the carnage they are forcing her to start._

_She tells herself that Luna and Neville are safe, and that is enough, but as they smother her in Hazmat suits and force her to increase the potency of that horrible, horrible plant, she begins to doubt it. Doubts form in her mind like cobwebs, and her hands, fumbling over the tools (partly because of the suit, and partly because of the fear) are the spiders building them._

_He doesn’t remember her name, and that scares her most. He works quietly at his bench, his helmet obscuring half his face, so she can see nothing but his fragile eyes. He has hollowed out since she last saw him. His cheeks have withered away into nothingness; his hair buzzed carelessly where once it was long enough to graze his jaw._

_He smiles at her. “Here,” he says often, correcting her grip around the unwilling plastic gloves. “Like this.”_

_He does not seem to think about the work. About its ramifications._

_Often, she will slip back into it, make a joke she knows his old self would laugh at. He never does. That scares her, too. She used to hold him in her mind as some kind of angel, faultless. And now here he is. And yet––_

_And yet._

_She says nothing. She fumbles the tools and he helps her. She glares at the guards who escort her to and from her measly cell. She sits on her cot and she cries. She tries to bat away the cobwebs with thoughts of home. But the clouds only pull together over her remaining hope._

 

* * *

 

Luna falls out of the dream without warning. She sits up. Her heavy breathing, and Ginny’s own, softer, is the only sound for what feels like miles. The grey blanket lies in a pool around her, and she misses her own blanket. It was a quilt, fashioned out of scraps of old clothes, as colourful as she could make it.

There is a sliver of light under the door. With her heartbeat still rushing in her ears, Luna stands and follows it.

The corridor is also metallic, and the light usually abrasive, but the early morning light on the base gives it a softer quality. Luna slides down against one of the walls. She curls up into a ball, rests her chin on her chest, urges herself not to _think._ That can wait till after, she tells herself.

After what? Her brain implores. What if she--? She can’t finish the thought. It’s there, all the same, the pulsing terror in the back of her head.

She hugs her knees tighter.

_Cho is not dead. She is not. We will find her._

There is a soft squeak, and then Ginny is there, against the floor next to her. “Okay?” she murmurs. Their arms are pressed together. It’s the cold metal of the floor which makes her move closer, anyway, she tells herself. She can feel Ginny’s muscles. It’s a nicer train of thought than her earlier one, but not a good one.

“You were so good yesterday. That duck and roll,” she mimes an explosion against her forehead with one hand. “Beautiful.”

Luna ducks her head. She’s been practising the duck and roll with Neville between sessions. She remembers the look in Ginny’s eyes when she’d done it perfectly today clearly. “Thank you,” she says carefully.

“Do you want to talk about it? Not the duck and roll, I mean. We’ve talked about that plenty. But, you know. The other things.”

 _Not really_. But this is Ginny, and Ginny has been nothing but kind. This is Ginny, whose warm eyes are staring into hers, and already they almost feel like home. “Well. I just… Cho.”

Ginny looks almost regretful. “I keep thinking that was my fault.”

“Of course not. If they _were_ tracking you, _I_ was the one who let you on the ship, so…” She doesn’t finish the sentiment. It hangs in the air between them all the same.

“I think we’ll all always blame ourselves. But that doesn’t mean it was our fault.”

“Okay,” Luna says. There’s a wisdom to that, even if she doesn’t believe it.

“I don’t know.” Ginny’s voice is blunt, stripped bare. “I don’t know if it’s true.”

“I want it to be,” Luna says because she wants to tell the truth here, faced by this version of Ginny: sleep-mussed and honest and bright red with earnestness.

“Then let’s let it be.”

 

Luna cheers when Ginny ducks between Malfoy’s legs to administer a solid kick between them. Malfoy howls in pain and Ron does too, in solidarity, or something. “Sorry, Draco. I think you’ll survive,” Ginny says, standing and patting him on the back. Malfoy utters a string of extremely offensive words, just as McGonagall comes striding into the room.

“That was a nice strategy, Miss Weasley,” she says appreciatively. “We’re talking plans in the next room, now.”

Hermione shoots up. “I’ve got some points.” Her hair bounces as she moves.

“We know, Hermione,” grumbles Ron, and then cries “ _Ow!_ ” when Harry steps on his foot. Hermione is too dark to blush, but she does shrink back in on herself a little at his words.

Appearing to understand that he has put his foot in his mouth, Ron himself turns beet red. “I mean. Your plans are amazing and I’m just jealous that I’m not as good at planning as you are?”

Hermione scoffs. “Right, sure,” she says, but she has straightened as she bustles out of the door, a small smile on her face. Ron, meanwhile, is left to the pokings of Ginny and Harry. The former jabs a finger into his stomach, says, “Dick,” and marches off.

Harry only rolls his eyes and shrugs. “You know you don’t need to say stuff like that,” he says, as Ron rubs his stomach.

“I know,” he says. “God, I’m stupid.”

“Well, think next time. Don’t be a Draco.”

This has Draco squawking. “What did _I_ do?”

“Looked stupid getting thrashed by Ginny, didn’t you?”

Draco opens his mouth. Then he closes it. “Come, Luna. Let’s leave these… _stupids._ ”

Luna does, listening to Harry’s laughter behind them. “Stupids! Draco, you are so funny sometimes.”

Draco sniffs a little. Luna bumps her shoulder against his in comfort. He huffs out a little breath. It’s softer than any other noise he’s ever made – his accent is like some kind of arrow, harsh and pointed. Or maybe it’s not his _accent_ so much as just the words he chooses, sharp-tipped, always finding their target. They go to the next room, and he is angular again, his words poised for the kill, this little puff of honesty forgotten.

 

Ron is dense sometimes. Frequently, it makes Ginny want to punch him. Take now, for instance, his attempts at profound apologies flying over everyone’s head, especially Hermione’s.

“Shut _up,_ Ronald,” she says. “I forgive you, okay. Just – be quiet. Please.”

Ron looks chastened. He moves away from her. It’s a small movement, but it is clearly enormous to him. He stares at her like a person staring across a gorge at a faraway lost love. It is all very melodramatic.

Harry, clearly, has a similar idea. He is chortling.

Draco and Luna come in last, and their entrance is accompanied by a little pang in Ginny’s chest. Which is ridiculous, to say the least.

Ron is still looking forlorn, and Ginny attempts a smile to brighten it. McGonagall surveys them all with a sigh. She looks incredulous. And tired, mostly.

“Well,” says McGonagall. “There had better be none of this--” she points to Ron, who shrinks – “on the mission.”

The forlorn look increases. Draco turns a pointed grimace at Harry. It is all happening today.

Luna, who has slid into a chair next to Ginny, looks thoughtful. “I wish these had wheels,” she murmurs to her, patting the chair regretfully.

A bubble of delighted confusion escapes her. “Wheels?”

“Yes. We had them at the station. You can race them. It’s very fun.”

“As exciting as that sounds, Miss Lovegood, I would like to let you know that a Death Eater ship is at this very moment approaching the planet.”

Ginny would much rather talk about chairs with wheels right now. McGonagall stands. “The base is already in lockdown. We’ve got thirty-six hours until they reach here, less if they send an escape pod instead. They’ll be close enough for us to launch in twenty-three hours, twenty minutes.”

Harry says: “Fuck,” which feels like an accurate representation of Ginny’s feelings.

“Well,” says McGonagall, “yes.”

This is startling. McGonagall is not the kind of person to express danger. “I cannot express how important it is that you get this right. If you don’t, thousands of people, hundreds of thousands, will die. Do _not_ go anywhere near the plant itself. I want you wearing your masks at all times.”

Neville is breathing heavily. Luna turns to whisper something to him, two words, barely anything. He looks at her, and quietly, utters, “Okay.”

She smiles. Her hand is holding his. It’s a lovely hand, long and elegant and perfect.

“You know the plan. Hermione, want to remind everyone?”

Hermione glances at Ron, who winces and then smiles brightly. “Go ahead, ‘Mione. I need a refresher. And anyway, it’s not my job to tell you whether you can or can’t tell us your amazing plan.”

Ginny mentally high-fives him. It’s a terrible thing to say, and Ron really is a champion at putting his foot in his mouth, but Hermione appears to appreciate it.

 

They take the ship out for a practice run after the briefing. Luna is the only one who sort of knows the workings of the ship, so she’s co-pilot, watching as Ginny presses the launch keys like it’s second nature.

It is second nature, really. She’s been flying since before she could remember. She used to hide out in old ships that had crashed on the desert planet she and her family lived on for so many years, practising pressing buttons on age-old ships that would never see the sky again. She remembers, as a child, looking up at the stars while sitting outside her family’s hut, thinking _One day, I will be there._ She thought she would claim the stars for her own.

Now, she sits in the pilot seat of a Resistance plane, practising loops and twirls while Luna sits beside her. “Look,” she says, “let’s find the Asteroid belt.”

It’s not far out, a perfect training ground for co-pilots whose only experience is space trawling. This solar system is one of her favourites. She’s been with the Resistance seven long years, and this system has become one of the most familiar, even more than her home planet. She loops around a hulking rock and looks to Luna. Her face full of wonder, she smiles back.

Ginny remembers the day Quibbler was destroyed. Somebody hung black sheets around the rec centre, and somebody else plastered the corridors with the faces of the dead. It was like living in a graveyard, lost faces peering at you whenever you turned a corner.

She doesn’t know where they found the pictures. She remembers one, a young man, eyes solemn and yet simultaneously full of life. It was a picture for some kind of identity card, that was obvious from the empty surroundings. His hair was long, or at least reasonably long, and he was probably not much older than she was now. She remembers staring at that picture for hours on end.

She doesn’t know why. There were plenty of younger faces along those walls, children, even. But for days on end, she would find herself staring at that picture, at the way he smiled.

It was horrifying. To know they were all gone, millions and millions of faces, so many that they could fill a planet’s worth of corridors, maybe more.

They took them down, eventually. It was bad for morale, Dumbledore said, when he held a ceremony to burn the pictures, and a long list of casualties was sent rushing into the wind. Ginny stood with Harry, under the broad trees. When she looked at the way their trunks bent forward she thought they might have been grieving.

A piece of one of the pictures – part of an ear, perhaps – tripped across the sky and landed in her hair. Her heartbeat rushed to her legs.

She had never known anyone from Quibbler. She wept all the same.

Trying to imagine dealing with that as somebody who had lived there, that was entirely different.

And here, Luna, laughing as they trip and bump through an asteroid belt. Here she is, making jokes about wheelie chairs and holding onto Neville’s hand.

Ginny dunks out of the belt and lets herself fall into orbit.

“What?” asks Luna, in that soft way of hers. Everything inside Ginny feels like melted candle wax. It sloshes into her throat, hot and heavy. She can’t say anything.

Beneath them, the planet turns. Something about it solidifies the feeling inside her, calming the heat.

Even if they fail, even if Living Death is released, this planet will keep turning. The Rebellion will stay alive even if it was dead. Rebellion has always been human nature, after all.

“I’m thinking about failure,” she begins.

“Me, too,” says Luna. “I’m always thinking about it.” There’s something heavy to these words, too, something Ginny can’t describe.

“You’ve lost a lot.”

There’s a silence. Ginny wonders if she’s said something wrong. Then Luna begins to speak, eyes focused on the space ahead.

“I think about it a lot. Failure. When I was small, my dad would tell me about his day at the station. He failed all the time, but he said it was okay because there was always a second chance. He said that failure was, um, ‘Only a stepping stone to success’. But then… he never got his success. So a part of me said, okay, then failure is the only option.

“Cho—After it happened, she was so _angry_. Cedric kept her optimistic, but he was gone. But she didn’t do anything, didn’t try. She said it was because of my Dad because he told her to look after me and Neville. I don’t know, exactly. It makes me think he knew it was going to happen. And a part of me wants to be angry because he knew he was going to fail. But then the rest of me tells it that it’s okay. Because at least he tried.”

Luna turns to Ginny. “I want to try, too. Even if we fail.”

It’s as if her words are breaking down a dam in Ginny’s heart she didn’t even know was there. “When it happened… there was a huge ceremony, at the base. All the pictures of the citizens we could find, we pasted up on the walls for a week. In the end, Dumbledore held a ceremony, and we burned them, in the forest.” _It’s a Quibbler tradition_ , they told them. _They burn the dead. We will burn their dead._

They didn’t say, _And then we will burn the Death Eaters,_ but she heard it all the same.

Luna smiles, softly. “I never was allowed to go to a funeral. Except for my mother, when I was nine. And only then because it was important. It doesn’t smell very good.” She cracks a smile, small and tired though it is. It isn’t really funny, but Ginny lets a small laugh loose anyway. Sitting here, in this ship she doesn’t know, orbiting a planet she does, something clicks in Ginny’s brain.

 _Oh,_ she thinks. _Oh._ And then: _Oh no._

She says, “Ginny, there’s something I have to tell you. I think—there was a scientist. On Quibbler. That they saved. I guess we know why, anyway, now.”

Luna’s quiet, murmured, “What?” is drowned out by McGonagall’s warning, blaring through the speaker.

“Attention, everyone. Operation Phoenix has been moved ahead. I repeat, Operation Phoenix has been moved ahead. Everyone to your stations. Lift-off is in one hour. One hour, I repeat.”

 Ginny's hands tighten on her controls. "This is it," she murmurs, and then she moves.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry it's so short, i wanted to get it out before i had to go into major exam mode. anyway i'm literally going to burst i am so PROUD of that section about draco sighing like. not to brag or anything (im an aries) but that is quite honestly the coolest thing i've ever written. and it was about a SIGH 
> 
> there probably won't be an update for anything any time soon --- i have 1000 words of the next chapter written but i've got exams from now until june so.. yeah


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> another short-ish one, but this is the most i've ever planned a fic ever so !! yay me :)

_Her first meeting with Him. (They capitalise it, like he’s some kind of deity –– The Lord, they call him. Fevered and maniacal, Cedric used to call it. After he – she won’t capitalise it. She won’t give him that honour. Bastard – died for the first time, before he came back with terror on his tongue and hidden beneath his fingers, they used to joke about it. She tries to remember what they said, not, but her memories are blank with fear and fury.) That’s what does it. She’s smarting and furious and the opposite of docile, whatever that is. Once, her instinct would have been to curl up and take it, but she is not the person she once was. When all the people she’d ever met (ever loved, if she’s being honest) were vaporised with a careless beam of power. Leaving her and Justin with two traumatised kids (because they were kids, really, just like she was) and a fury the size of the galaxy itself._

_She sits on the chair and he surveys her and she runs through every furious thought she’s ever had, her brain racing._

_He laughs. There’s a hiss in it. Snakelike. “So, you’ve finished your task. That means we get to have some fun, now, lovely.”_

_She nearly punches him._

_Afterwards, lying motionless on her bed, she thinks of his horrible, horrible face. And she knows what to do._

_She retrieves her hairpin and begins to scrape against her bed._

_The hope hasn’t come back. She doesn’t think it will ever come back._

_There is only the inconceivable fury simmering throughout her body that keeps her measured. She_ will _get out. She knows it._

_And then she will blow this whole damn place into the sun._

 

Ginny’s too focused on her own flying, even as the Reds begin their assault, even as gunshots are flung across the sky like shooting stars. It’s all she can do to dodge the assault coming her way. To focus on getting onto the ship undetected.

Their cloaking is only so good.

She doesn’t think about her brothers, surrounded by hordes of Death Eaters. She doesn’t think of Ron, of Neville and Hermione and Harry, even Draco, crammed on the deck below. She doesn’t think of Luna, Luna who has lost so much already, Luna who is smiling at her encouragingly. Ginny adjusts her grip. She steels herself.

A lightning bolt of anger surges across the sky. She swerves, rolls. To fire back would be to give out her location.

“Yellow One?” comes Tonks’ voice. “Yellow One, where are you?”

“Sorry, Tonks,” says Fred. “We’re taking out the cannon but we need an–Ah! Incoming! Sorry–we need a distraction.”

“Okay. Reds, cover them. Blues go for the rest of the ship. Weasley the Younger–get to the dock. Greens, with me. We’re going to blast you a way in.”

There’s a chorus of assent. They scatter. Hundreds of ships, sailing between the stars, and the gunfire as the Death Eaters struggle to catch up. They move effortlessly, wildly, around bursts of fire. Messages begin to stutter through. Ginny swerves a blast.

“Yellows! All fire!” comes Fred’s cry.

“Reds! On your left!”

“Blue Three, get on the nearest gun. Four, you be the distraction.”

“Okay, okay. On three.” There’s a heavy blast somewhere to Ginny’s left.

“Red Five, are you there? Do you copy?”

“Three!”

“Red Five? I repeat, do you copy?” The voice is strangled. Ginny winces.

“Two!”

“Lav! Red Five, Lav, are you there?”

Somebody shouts “One!” over the cries, and then everything bursts into noise. A million things explode at once. Ships fly backwards. Somebody cheers. Somebody curses.

The cannon falls.

“Okay, okay. Greens, let's go. Ginny, you ready?”

Ginny looks at Luna, sitting in the passenger seat beside her. Smiling. She thinks dying trying to save the galaxy would be a pretty good death. “As I’ll ever be,” she says.

She moves. A Death Eater ship comes shooting past her, and she ducks far below, before rising to meet the Greens. Together, they move, like a flock of birds in the sky. It’s effortless, graceful, even as they dodge assault from all sides.

The Yellows are fighting ships, now, face on. Something explodes. Over the comms, Fred cackles.

“Take that, Death Eater bastards! I can’t believe––“ He stops. There is an explosion. It reverberates across the speaker and throughout the ship. Then, terribly, horribly, silence.

“Fred?” comes George’s voice. “Fred?”

A cloud of Death Eaters begins to gather in front of Ginny’s ship. Luna is looking at Ginny with sad eyes. She’s not sure what just happened. She knows only that her life has just changed, unmistakeably, eternally, horrifically.

“Fred!” comes Ron’s muffled shout from below deck.

“Oh, _fuck,”_ says Harry. “It’s going to be okay, I promise. _Fuck_.”

George is still on the comms. His shallow breathing is impossibly quiet and so, so, loud.

The ship hangs in the air. Ginny hangs onto the controls with all her might. She exhales heavily.

“Ginny,” says Luna quietly.

“Ginny,” says Tonks.

“Ginny,” says George, “make the bastards pay.”

She will. She knows it with every ounce of her soul. The fury is already wrapping itself around her insides, cold and dark and terrible. “I will,” she says. She will.

She will.

 

Ginny’s chest is shaking as Ron sweeps her up. Hermione’s crying, her breath wobbling dangerously as she says: “Okay. Okay, we’ve got to go. Come on.”

Draco swears. “They’re outside.”

They are. A wall of Death Eaters stands between them and the exit. Ron begins to cram explosives into his bag. He’s still shaking. “Come on, Harry,” he says. “We need to make sure these don’t get hit, and you’re our best bet.”

“I need defence, here,” says Hermione. “Looks like it’s you and me, Draco.”

“Yeah. And Neville, with us, in case we find a sample of Living Dead. Where are the masks?”

They’re passed out wordlessly.

“Remember, these only provide an hour of protection at most. _Be careful_. It’s going to be okay.”

Ginny surges forward, suddenly, sweeping her arms around Ron and Harry. “If you fuckers get hurt, I’ll appear in the Underworld to blast you into the ground. I swear it,” she says, pointing accusingly at them. “Come on, Luna. Let’s find Cho.”

A blaster is pressed into Luna’s hands. Her breath is heavy. Hot, too. She thinks about the explosion of Quibbler. About the smaller one of Fred’s ship.

Now is not a time for hesitation.

She turns the safety off.

 

They explode out of the ship all at once. Harry appears first and sends the guns of the nearest soldiers flying with a flick of his wrist. Death Eaters duck for cover, spiralling between guns that Harry directs into faces and chests and groins like the conductor of an orchestra. Only his instruments are the soldiers, who let out a cacophony of groans and yowls. Luna holds her own blaster heavily, aiming a kick at somebody’s chest and finding his leg. Behind her, Ginny sends bolts of lightning flying. She points a hand towards a door.

The satchel full of bombs bounces heavily against Luna’s leg. She winces. She keeps going.

Ginny sends a blast directly into somebody’s face. Another, Luna trips as he comes rushing at Ginny, clearly deeming her unimportant. She jams a heel into his chest.

“Nice,” crows Ginny, kicking open the door.

Once it’s closed again, the banging of the battle is dimmed to a quiet murmur. Occasionally, the floors will shake as Draco knocks something particularly heavy over while building his barricade around the ship.

Luna drags a huge chest in front of the door to keep it closed. They set off again, and if they hold each other’s hands, then who is there to comment? Luna can’t imagine the Death Eaters will care.

Ginny is panting, heavy breaths echoing around the room. There’s nothing here, and they don’t know the plans well enough to know where to go.

Ginny hands her a bomb. “Here,” she says, removing another one from her pack as if it’s nothing more than an apple. Ginny has a kind of easiness with weapons that always astounds Luna. She runs her fingers carefully along the wires of the thing. It’s small, for something so deadly.

“We need to find a computer. That way Pig can get in the system and we can find a map.”

It sounds easy enough, but looking along the corridor at the millions of identical doors, it seems far from possible. “Okay,” Luna says. They have to try, anyway.

 

Door after door leads to nothing but storage closets. Ginny sighs after the fourth, says, “Does ever Death Eater have their own cupboard?”

Luna shrugs, going for the next one. There’s a thud as something falls down. Then, distantly, a cry of: “Who’s there?”

All the breath flies out of Luna at once. She pulls Ginny into the cupboard. They stand pressed together for as long as possible, willing the Death Eater to move onwards.

“There’s two of them,” Ginny whispers. They’re murmuring amongst each other as they pull open every consecutive door. Luna can’t move.

“There are worse ways to be caught, anyway,” she says, trying to inject a little positivity into the surroundings.

“I’m sorry,” mumbles Ginny. She braces a hand on her blaster as she speaks, quietly murmuring. “I’m so sorry.”

“What for?”

“Bringing you here. Not telling you about the scientist. Letting Cho get captured. Everything.”

Her eyes are wide with regrets. All Luna wants is to reassure her, to pour out comforts and make that fear go away. It terrifies her. “Do you know who the scientist is?” she asks carefully.

“Only that he was retrieved before they blew Quibbler. And with what’s happening now… It’s hardly a coincidence. Is it?”

And that’s the question. Because Luna’s heart is filling with anticipation so full she thinks it might explode out of her, a supernova of joy mixed with ever-present terror. She says, “Thank you for telling me, now, at least.”

The Death Eaters are at the door now. They’re having a conversation between themselves, complaining about the quality of the food in the canteen. Ginny says, “Get your blaster.”

Luna does. It’s still heavy in her hand, foreign and unnatural. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever be comfortable with it. She sighs. Inhale, exhale. _You can do this._

She levels her gun. The guard swings the door open, still distracted by the texture of the mashed potatoes. Ginny fires in his face. His fall is almost comical, melodramatic like something out of a school play. Luna hits the other, whispers an apology as he careens backwards.

“Ouch,” Ginny says. She’s laughing.

 

They stuff them in the closet, barricading both doors. This whole thing is like something out of the spy novels Cho and Cedric used to read together. They would read their favourite parts out loud during their breaks, making squeaky voices with ridiculous accents and guffawing every time a clue was conveniently deposited in the character’s laps.

Ginny runs forward, says, “At least we know this whole corridor is cupboards now,” and turns a corner. Luna has to follow, watching as Ginny slips inside a door and says, “Nice! Maintenance.”

There’s the sound of a blaster, a soft yelp, some thumping. By the time Luna gets inside, Pig is attached to the computer’s processor and Ginny is carefully placing some poor engineer on a droid sickbed and covering him with a sheet.

Luna goes to supervise Pig. Numbers flash across the screen too fast for her to follow. Guards must be patrolling. She doesn’t know how much time they have. Pig lets out a stream of frustrated beeps that makes Ginny laugh. He keeps looking. Green code blurs together through its frantic movement. There’s a lurching feeling in Luna’s stomach, like a wave moving constantly back and forth.

The computer settles on some sort of database. There are only two entries. Ginny, coming up behind her, says, “Those are the detainees currently onboard. One male, one female. Cellblock… five.”

Instead of settling, the wave inside of Luna lurches up into her throat, depositing a lump that makes her unable to speak. Her father… Luna doesn’t know how to express her gratitude. She grabs at Ginny’s hand. Ginny squeezes back. “Yeah,” she says. “I know.”

 

Cell block five isn’t far away, but it is crawling with guards. Luna says: “Pig? Do you trust me?”

Pig blurts a series of beeps that Luna takes to mean yes. “Okay. Well, you’re small but loud. Can you go down to the other end of the corridor, and make the loudest racket you can? Lead them away back towards the ship. Then find somewhere to hide. Do you know where that is?”

Pig beeps quickly. He scuttles out of the door.

“Come on,” says Ginny. “We’ve got a reunion to get to.”

 

Cellblock Five is yet another corridor. The racket Pig is making is giving Ginny a headache, so she closes the door carefully behind them until it dulls to a faint screeching. Luna is striding down towards the only cell with a closed door. Its huge, metallic form looms above them. The idea of being stuck here for so long grates against Ginny’s brain like nails on a blackboard. She shudders.

Luna gazes up at it, expression unreadable.

“What if it’s not him?” she asks. Her eyes are wide.

“What if it is?” asks Ginny. She shoots the lock, pushes the door open.

A man sits with his back to them, head down. There is something familiar about his posture, but his eyes are quiet and empty.

“Oh,” says Ginny. “Hello.”

Luna says nothing until he turns. “Is it time?” he asks dully, without a hint of recognition. “I’ll come. Just let me…”

He is very young, to be her father. Almost too young. His eyes are tired, though, dulled in a way that they hadn’t been before. Because Ginny knows that face. The disappointment Luna is trying to mask speaks volumes.

This is the boy from the picture, Ginny realises. This is–

“Cedric,” says Luna, quietly, sadly, “We’ve come to take you home.”

“Who’s that?” he replies. “I _am_ home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to those of you who've been commenting. it's super sweet and nice of you :) xoxo


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rewatched the original trilogy for the first time in a while and realised i'd (slightly) misunderstood the force/jedi-ness in general! & harry and draco are technically sith since they have used the force as a weapon to attack rather than defend only! i'm going to use the powers of the internet and also the excuse that this is an au to say: fuck that noise! i got it wrong definitely on purpose because it makes fight scenes cooler (even though it's not involved in any of the climaxes of this chapter or the next one probably.)

_Something about grief: it is not always about death._

_Something about grief: it is crushing and overwhelming and horrifying and every other adjective you can think of. Think of two walls moving in on you, and you have nowhere to go. Think of anger curling in your toes. Think of hopelessness, like you’re stranded in the middle of an ocean with no anchor to hold yourself in place._

_Something else about grief: it does not go away._

_Cho scrapes at the lock of the lab. Cedric is gone. Whether or not he is alive, he is gone. Somewhere, his memories are lumped in the back of You-Know-Who’s brain, collecting dust. The grief has been festering in her for years, really, crawling its way around her heart, tendrils of ink-black fury taking hold of every organ in her entire body. She breathes anger. She breathes despair._

_Nothing will change this. So she bursts through the door, firing her stolen blaster at the unsuspecting guards. Alarms are blaring. There is no time._

_She sends a prayer. For Cedric. For Luna, for Neville, hell, even for Xeno. Plucks the plant from the table._

_Hands fumble._

_Shards of glass fly everywhere. Her curse is a spring of desperation. She finds a plastic bag, thinks,_ Fuck it. _They’re going to die, either way. (_ I’m going to die, _murmurs the small voice of terror in her head. She is not afraid of it. She’s not. So why are her hands so shaky?)_

 

* * *

“Somebody else is here,” says Ginny quietly, interrupting Luna’s train of thought. She removes her hand with a sigh, ignoring the bemused expression on Cedric’s face.

He mumbles, “Do you have a new job for me? Does He?”

There are no words for what she is feeling right now. The star inside her is about to go supernova, she thinks. Cedric’s eyes are blank. Once, he had held her hand and shown her a diagram of a Crumple-Headed Snorkack for the first time. Now, he holds her hand only for balance.

Everything is off-kilter, like she has walked a tightrope and then forgotten to get down. Like the galaxy is spinning too fast, and she is losing track of everything important. First Cho, now this. Now this: Cedric rubbing his eyes under his glasses (glasses?), straightening his sleeves as unfocused eyes seem to gaze right through her. Confusion papering his face.

“Why can’t people stay dead?” asks Ginny, maybe a little malicious.

“Why do people die in the first place?” responds Luna, maybe a little naïve.

This is not how it is supposed to go. This is not how it happens in the novels, in the stories the Rebellion have told her, about tenacity and hope and democracy surviving even after the tale is done.

She had imagined, once, meeting her father again, or her mother. Cracks in her heart resealing and being covered over, soft and kind.

This, she now knows, was a fantasy, born of grief and foolish hope. Cedric blinks, and instead of being repaired, the two halves of her heart move farther and farther away.

“Are you allowed to be here?” he asks. Luna wants to cry.

“We have to go, Lu,” insists Ginny. And then: “Lu? Luna? Come on. We’re going to—we’re going to get shot.”

Running isn’t the answer. They do it anyway, ignoring Cedric’s sputtering protests. He stumbles along behind them, feet slapping along the lifeless white of the corridor. How did it come to this? How can she be so lost in this moment that should be joyful? Cedric is holding her hand as they haul him towards this new life she has made without him. It does not feel like how it used to, when he would hold her hand as he showed her how to identify plants, or how to play that horrible card game he liked that she can’t remember the name of. Does Cho know about this? She can’t imagine that ending well.

She puts her other hand into Ginny’s. For balance.

 

_Oh_ , thinks Ginny, as Luna grabs onto her hand as they stop for breath behind a corner. She looks at Cedric, this boy who has destroyed something in Luna’s face, and thinks: _Oh,_ again.

There’s a loud crash, several shouts. Beside her, Luna winces. Draws herself up and lets go of Cedric’s hand. It wouldn’t be fair to expect her to know what to do, now. So Ginny turns to Cedric. She remembers watching his face laid onto a funeral bonfire. She remembers watching him burn.

“What’s your name?” she asks.

“Prisoner 497S,” he says, and _God,_ she wants to punch something.

Instead, she says only, “Okay. Well, we are here to keep you safe. Do you know anything about a girl who was being kept here? Working on the Living Death.”

He nods, still a little blank. “Yes,” he says, “she was being kept in my cell. I don’t know why. Anyway, she left.”

“Left?” asks Luna. Pig, on her shoulder, chirps in horror. “Left to where?”

“I don’t know. She left.”

“Okay. Okay, when did she leave? Did you see the time, or anything?” She’s grasping at straws, she knows. There’s no way he’s going to—

“She was very angry. Muttering about the plant, I think. ‘Burn these bastards to death,’ she said. I don’t think she knew I could here. Are you going to kill her?”

It’s the candour that gets her. The way he talks so nonchalantly about brutality. Ginny’s hands are fisted, Luna’s own hands practically squashing hers. If Ginny were force-sensitive, the way she used to imagine she was, she would send a telepathic message to Luna. _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry I love you._ This is not fair. It is not remotely fair. She wants to scream at whatever bastard God is running this whole demented show.

People died for this. Legions of people have died and here they are, she thinks, seven people on a ship in empty space and the girl they’re trying to save about to destroy them.

She can’t let Luna die.

“Ron,” she calls into her radio. “Ron, are you there? We need you to take somebody for us. Can you do that?”

His reply is crackly. Half-lost. “Where are you?”

“Cell Block Five. Pig’s sending you a map now.”

“Copy that,” he says, and his voice blinks out.

Again, Cedric says, “Are you going to kill me?”

Luna makes a noise that tears into Ginny’s soul. “No. No, of course not, Cedric. We would never.”

“Okay,” he replies. There’s not a hint of trust in it. Ginny rests her free hand on Luna’s shoulder.

“Come here,” she says. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

She sweeps her up into a hug, as comforting as she can manage. Luna’s radio digs uncomfortably into Ginny’s chest. She ignores it.

“It’s not your fault,” Luna says into her shoulder.

“It’s not yours, either.”

“Um,” says Cedric. “Who are you?”

Ginny looks to Luna. Lets her go. Keeps holding her hand. For balance.

“Cedric, I know you don’t remember me, but I knew you. We’re here to help you.”

He’s still unsure. Ginny can see it in the crease between his eyebrows, in the shape of his mouth. She says, “You’re going to have to trust us.”

He says, “Okay. I guess.”

 

Ron appears with a lot of complaining. Neville, trailing behind him, looks between them and Cedric and stares.

“Ced!” he cries. Arms fly as Cedric is pulled into a hug.

“Hello,” he says. Careful. Eyes wide.

 Something in Neville quiets. He looks to Luna, who shakes her head. His face crumples, ever so slightly. He is getting better at hiding his emotions, Luna thinks.

“This is Cedric,” she tells Ron. “Take him somewhere safe. We’re going to find Cho.”

“What about the plant?”

Ginny says, “Well, we think she’s got it.”

Ron nods. He holds out his fist to Ginny, who smiles tightly. “Be safe.”

“Make them pay,” she replies. He returns the smile, thin and decisive.

“You too.”

They’re gone without another word. Luna sighs, staring after Cedric’s retreating back.

“Hey,” says Ginny. “I’m here.”

“Thank you,” says Luna. That’s all there is to say.

 

There are blaster marks staining the corridor outside the control room. Burnt edges sizzle, smoking slightly. Death Eaters lie in a haphazard pile in the middle of it.

“Cho…” says Luna. Ginny squeezes her hand.

 

Through the door: a dark figure, looming over the controls. A plastic bag gripped in one hand. Tears dripping like a fountain from her eyes. She turns.

“Lu,” she says, quietly. “Hello.”

Luna, frozen with fear. Hands pressed against the glass of the door. She fumbles for the handle.

“Luna, no!” says Ginny suddenly, pulling her hands back. “Look. She has the plant.”

“Yeah,” says Cho. “Yeah, I do.” She straightens, though her legs are still shaking slightly. “Luna, get your friends, and run. I’m going to blow up these bastards.”

“No.”

It’s only one syllable. One word. But she says it so heavily, so strongly, it becomes the truth. Cho pauses whatever she’s doing.

“What about Cedric?” Luna says.

“You saw him? Luna, he’s not coming back.”

“Who says?” Stubborn. Ginny hadn’t realised she could be so stubborn. “Are you going to give your whole life up over a guy.”

“This isn’t for him. This is for them.

“They were inside my _mind,_ Luna, do you understand that? They were going to do to me what they did to him. All for this _fucking_ plant. Goddamnit, I’m doing this so you don’t have to. _Go._ ”

She says it again. “No.”

And suddenly, Cho is no longer Cho. She is something else, something powerful, something determined. Unstoppable. Immoveable.

A voice spills over the comms. “Mayday! Death Eaters closing in. Ron, Ginny, are your missions complete? We need you back here in ten minutes.”

“Copy,” cries Ron.

“Ginny? Ginny, are you there?”

Ginny looks at Cho. She’s crying, still. Eyes red-rimmed and tired, but certain. She does not need to do this.

“Put the plant down, Cho, please. Please, Cho. I can’t … not again.”

Cho says: “No. They’ll find me again. They always find us. I can’t, Luna, and I won’t.”

“Ginny? Ginny?” comes Harry’s hurried voice.

“Cho, please.”

“NO, Luna.”

_God,_ thinks Ginny. _Fuck these bastards and their stupid machines and their stupid fucking empire. Fuck them all._

 

* * *

 

_A tall man emerges from the blockade. “Son,” he says, and his laughter is cruel._

_The angular boy raises his lightsaber. Tears line his eyes with red. “Father,” he says._

_A boy with red hair, glaring at a smaller boy as they stow bombs in every cranny they can find. Their fear propels them forward, timers set and minds racing. This is it._

_A different boy’s glasses shine in the glaring light. His blade is green, like beginnings. His opponent’s is red, like endings. When they collide, the sparks can be seen from the other side of space._

_And two girls, clinging to each other as they stare down another, her hair wild and her eyes terrified. In one hand she holds a plant, barely covered by a plastic bag. She wears no mask, and she is coughing._

 

* * *

 

“You can’t stop me, Lu. This is my decision. I’m going to stop this,” Cho says, through the glass. Her eyes are wild, roaming everywhere. “I _made this_. I have to do it.”

“Cho. _Cho._ ”

Her hands tighten on the plastic bag as she shudders through one convulsion, a second. “Look at me. _Look at this._ I’m dying, Luna.”

“We can find a cure,” Luna says, hands trembling. “Dad’s cure. What do you remember of it? Look… come away from the controls. _Please. God,_ please, Cho.” It’s the first time Ginny has ever heard her plead for anything. It contradicts with everything she’s ever known about Luna.

“Luna. We don’t have much time.” Time. It’s slipping away from them, melting like ice cubes on a hot day. Ginny pulls Luna towards the door. “Luna. I can’t lose you, too.”

“And I can’t lose Cho,” she says, like it’s simple.

Maybe it is.

Ginny jams on her mask. She opens the door.

It’s over before she can really think about it. Luna on one side. Ginny on the other. She slams the locking button. “Get to Hermione. Set the bombs. _Please._ ”

Luna’s reply is nothing but a muffled cry. “I’m sorry,” says Ginny. “I can’t let you die. Not today.”

“What?” asks Cho, softly. “Why?”

“You know why,” Ginny says. Cho smiles.

“I used to think I’d do that for Cedric.”

“Would you?” asks Ginny. Her heart is pounding in her ears.

Cho grips the plastic bag tighter. “I don’t know.” Her eyes flick to Luna. Ginny’s do not, cannot. “I promised I’d keep her safe.”

“You can. Still.”

“The blast won’t be confined to this room. And she won’t leave.”

Ginny kicks at her blaster. Her mask is holding back the worst of it, but there’s the smell of death pushing through it, tendrils of horror reaching at her, clawing at her.

_Neville!_ Luna cries into a comm, far away and yet so close. _Neville, get to Hangar C. Our ship! Dad’s research._

Lines of dust cover the shelves. And there, behind one of the empty glass jars, a single word: _Cho._

It’s scratched into the wall, tender and rushed all at once. She can imagine Cedric here, writing it into the wall of his prison. His face, his name, buried in a gallery of the dead. There only being this: _Cho Cho Cho Cho Cho._

“Cho,” Ginny says now. “I know he’s gone. And that maybe he’ll never come back. But if you do this, right now, Luna will never come back either. To you or to me. And I want – I want so much, Cho. But I can’t have it, not unless you put that down. Please. Just come with us.”

“It’s already inside me.” Her voice is small. Even through the vacuum-sealed door, Luna’s cries almost overshadow it.

“We just have to believe they’ll find a cure.”

Cho nods. “But I’m contagious now.”

Ginny shrugs. There’s not much else to do. “Yeah,” she says. “And you’re the only person alive who worked – who can remember working on that cure. If I don’t bring you back, who’s to say that it won’t get manufactured again?”

“You don’t think Cedric will remember,” she says. Not a question, just a tired, resigned statement.

“Does that change anything? There’s no reason for you to sacrifice yourself now. Cho, if you blow us up, you’re doing what they want you to. And fuck that, right? Fuck the Death Eaters.”

“Fuck the Death Eaters,” Cho murmurs. Then, louder, almost a yell: “Fuck them!”

She stares at the plastic bag in her hand. At the bombs that have been strewn across the room.

“Fuck them,” she says.

Ginny goes for the comms. “Luna,” she says. “We’re coming out, but we need to decontaminate.”

A breathy laugh echoes in her ear. “Ginny,” she says.

“Come on,” Ginny says to Cho. “Let’s burn these bastards to the ground.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> OH MY GOD !!! not sure im 1000% happy with this except. im so glad its coming to an end omg. 
> 
> i also uploaded a [short lil pansy/ginny post-war fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18706660) if u want to check it out lol


	6. Chapter 6

Running in a Hazmat suit is not easy. Ginny fumbles with her blaster until Luna wrenches it from her grasp and sends a blast directly into the face of an oncoming Death Eater. They run down the corridors, Ginny desperately sending messages to the rest of the team. There’s never a reply, even as they hurriedly dismantle their haphazard barricade. Cho murmurs some sort of prayer as they burst through the door, and Luna grabs her hand and squeezes. Ginny looks away. This is not a moment for her.

Instead, she focuses on the gunfire careening across the hangar. The back of Hermione’s head pokes up from behind a makeshift barrier, a dark hand holding a tiny blaster.

“Come on,” says Ginny. “Lu, give me your gun.”

She can see Ron, on the other side, attempting to shield Neville with an arm. Neville, running with his hands above his head, a blaster held shakily in his hands. “Take that, you brother-murdering _bastards_!” Ron cries.

“Yeah!” echoes Neville. He fires a round of lasers. “You’re the worst, guys!” Cedric, behind them, moans in terror.

Draco is standing on top of the barricade, lightsaber in one hand and Harry in the other. A blond man stands below him, and if she squints Ginny can see the tears on his cheeks. He’s talking too quietly for her to hear over the gunfire.

She’s barely paying attention when the Death Eaters notice their little group of three, until Luna screams. Harry turns his head, and, wordlessly, sends the wing of a ship flying in to block their attackers’ path. Ginny takes her blaster back from Luna, and fires a round using the wing as a shield. Two black helmets lie on the floor in front of her.

“Go,” she tells Cho, “get in the ship—see if you can get started on brainstorming a cure. We’ll cover you.”

Cho disappears, the orange of her suit making her a perfect target. Luna fires at one Death Eater, another, and they fall in sync. “Mione,” Ginny says into the comm, “Cho’s coming, but she’s infected. Don’t let her take the suit off.”

Hermione says, “Ginny…” but nothing more, so Ginny stows the comm with a sigh.

It’s then that she hears the scream. It echoes in her ears and fills her entire body up with terror. Draco shouts: “ _Father!_ ”

Luna says: “ _Ginny._ ”

The blond man from before has a hand in her hair, his eyes glinting with horrifying terror. “Well, hello there. I’d like you to put down your gun, please. You too, Draco. Lightsabers, please.”

Ginny does what he says.

There’s nothing else to do.

“Father, you don’t have to do this. _Please._ ”

“Let her go,” says Ginny. “She’s done nothing, she’s not with the Rebellion, she—“

“Well, it seems to me she’s done an awful lot, haven’t you, dear?”

There’s a gun at Luna’s throat. Death Eaters surrounding her.

Ginny can’t stop shaking. First Fred, now—

“Now, Draco, it seems like you owe me a little chat.”

Draco stands tall, despite his lightsaber being in the hands of an enemy, sticky with blood.

“I have nothing to say to you. I defected for a reason, father.”

“This has nothing to do with Luna!” cries Ginny.

“Be quiet!”

“No!” cries a voice. Cho, walking on wobbly legs over the bodies of Death Eaters. Lucius pauses, his gun lowering slightly. “Do you know what’s happened to me, Lucius?”

Lucius says, “I can imagine.” He gulps, resolves himself. “None of this would have happened to you if you’d behaved, like Cedric.”

Cho laughs, and it’s heavy and accusatory. “You know I’m infected, then. What I can do to you if I take this suit off? You won’t stand a chance. Let them go. Let them all go.”

He looks almost afraid. It makes him look like Draco, for a split second. Cho reaches for her helmet, hands still shaking. She coughs exaggeratedly. Lucius’ grip on Luna loosens, enough for her to plant a solid kick between his legs.

Ginny dives for her blaster as Harry and Draco seize theirs from the Death Eaters.

“Get back, shitbags!” crows Ron, waving his blaster maniacally.

A door wrenches from its hinges and knocks a clump of them over. Harry whistles. “Nice one, Draco.”

“I’m in the mainframe!” says Hermione. “Let’s go.”

The hangar doors spread open, and it’s freedom, it’s victory. It’s not an ending, but it’s something.

They burst from the ship and into open space just as a thousand Death Eaters are sent up in flames.

 

Later, Luna asks: “Do you think we got him?” Her eyes are wide and full of something entirely new. Hermione, Neville and Cho are going over formula for the Living Death cure downstairs. Ron is dancing to Luna’s jazz tapes with Harry in the common area and Draco is off being introspective. Only Luna and Ginny are sitting quietly in the cockpit, gazing at the stars.

“Who?”

“Voldemort,” she says, quietly. Space seems to stretch on for years.

Ginny looks at her, and goes for the truth. “No,” she says. “This isn’t the end, I wouldn’t say. Still more to do.”

 

Even later, Luna murmurs: “The world is a little bit brighter, though, don’t you think? Even if it isn’t over.” The tips of her dress trail in the water, leaving a dark yellow stain on its hem as she sways idly from side to side.

“You’re a sap, Lu,” Ginny observes. She’s stripped down to just her sports bra, kicking her legs out occasionally and watching the droplets explode out of the water. The moonlight spills across the horizon. Behind them, people are shouting, laughing. Luna grins at her. She waves her arms above her head.

“But it’s true. Why wouldn’t I say it?”

The trees groan. The water laps at her calves, comforting. Somebody has started an impromptu poker match. Whoops and shouts diffuse across the grounds.

“How do you mean?”

Luna waves her arms a little. She gestures to the sky. “I don’t know. It just…” she stretches out so her sleeves billow outwards. “It just is.”

“Everything’s always so simple to you,” Ginny says. It isn’t malicious, just an observation.

“Things just are.”

“Not this.” It’s true. Nothing is simple, not any more. The world has exploded, and she’s still struggling to put the pieces back together. Nothing ever fits properly. It’s all disjointed, false attempts at happiness, at strength. She watches the streamers sail overhead. Somebody set off some fireworks earlier. The glitter still hangs in the air. It seems ironic. 

Luna seems to recognise what she’s thinking. “I think,” she says, advancing like some kind of river nymph across the shallows of the lake, “they would have wanted this. The celebration.”

And she’s right. She’s so terribly, awfully right. And Ginny wants to scream.

It’s not fair. They should be here.

They should all be here.

Luna’s earrings bounce gently against her neck. She smiles like the moonlight: gentle, forgiving, as if the world is a comforting place.

In a way, looking at Luna’s face as the gentle light of the moon catches in her eyes and makes them shine softly, it almost feels true. And she hates herself all the more for it, for the semblance of normalcy, for the comfort. It’s not fair. The world isn’t fair. It’s malicious, it’s desperate. It’s cutthroat and awful.

“You’re angry.”

“You didn’t lose anyone. Not this time.”

It hangs in the air between them, a furious cloud. 

“Don’t be stupid,” Luna says, and it’s soft. Regretful. Why doesn’t she ever get angry?

“I’m not. It’s true.”

Luna looks at her. Long and tired. “You’re saying things you don’t mean,” she says. She’s calm, even smiling. “You’re angry and you’re taking it out on me. That’s stupid.”

Ginny stares at her. Luna’s calm assurances only make her more furious. It bursts out of her skin, like nothing she’s felt since she was little. “That’s _bullshit,_ Luna. You can’t be serious. _I’m_ the one who’s brother’s dead.”

Luna doesn’t reply. She just crouches down so the bottom half of her dress is submerged, trailing her hand through the water. “Okay.” Her jaw is tight, her fingers trembling. She doesn’t look at Ginny.

Far away, somebody whoops. Ginny’s fury increases. “Whatever,” she says. The feeling simmers under her skin. She is filled with it, hot and heavy. She has never felt more empty.

“Cho was going to leave, you know,” says Luna. “Without saying goodbye, I mean.” She laughs softly. “Of course you know. You were there.”

“Luna…”

“No, don’t. She was going to leave. And she could have died. I thought she was going to die. But we got her back. And I’m _lucky_ , I know that. But you can’t just…”

And all the sorrow, all the grief comes washing over her. It submerges the flicker of her anger until it’s washed away, and then all that’s left is her shame. “Why am I the one who’s always left?” she murmurs.

“You’re asking me?” replies Luna, and it’s that half-joke that does it. Ginny clutches at her dress.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs, drawing her close. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. You have every right to be angry. I’m angry.”

“Why don’t you ever show it?”

Luna shrugs, sliding her hand into Ginny’s. “I don’t know,” she says. “I’m so angry, though.” And, still clutching Ginny’s hand, she opens her mouth, and screams. Ginny startles.

“What?”

“Try it. It’s good,” Luna offers. And Ginny looks into those sad eyes that have never lead her wrong, who pulled her back from death too many times in the past few days.

“Okay,” she says.

So there they are. Two girls, knee deep in a lake, screaming. It’s like a gust of air. Ginny hadn’t realised something so simple could make you feel so much better. She is so, so angry. But somehow, with every second the screaming lasts, a little bit of anger trickles away.

She closes her mouth. She’s barely made any difference, really, but she feels the loss of its weight everywhere. “You’re brilliant, Luna,” she says, quietly, because it’s true.

“So are you,” says Luna, and she says it in such a way that Ginny can’t help but believe it. And so she kisses her.

 

It begins like this: one girl, alone on a spaceship, blown out of the sky and into the trawling pod of another.

It ends like this: they go back to the base. They go to bed. They cry. They heal. And they live.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AND IT'S DONE! it's quite short because i wanted to leave it kind of open-ended for a sequel and also because i didn't have that much to say. this fic is one of the first multi-chapter fics i've ever finished, and i'm super, super proud of it. (i've had this chapter written since pretty much the beginning of this story, although it was originally the opening to a completely different fic)
> 
> thank you so much to everyone who left comments or kudos, it really means the world to me. 
> 
> whenever i'm writing a new story i like to set myself goals. for this, i wanted to figure out how to plot more tightly (i still need to work on this though) and to use more inventive writing, although sometimes i worry it got a bit pretentious. if you have any suggestions for how to improve in the future, i would appreciate it a lot! thank you so much for sticking with this disaster.

**Author's Note:**

> im on [tumblr](http://lamegfx.tumblr.com) if u care


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